Show Notes
Why should firms care about productivity? How does it add to the bottom line? What exactly drives productivity? And how can you get better at it? This episode is a conversation with three current and former business leaders talking about how they think about productivity, what it means to them, and what practical productivity measures their firms use.
Host Professor Bart van Ark is joined by:
Katy Davies, Managing Director of Evolve Your Future. Lou Cordwell, Special Advisor to the Office of the President and Vice-Chancellor at The University of Manchester and Professor of Innovation at the Alliance Manchester Business School. Greg McDonald, Founder and Executive Chair of Goodfish.
For more information on the topic:
The Productivity Institute, (2024) Productivity Primer: Why productivity matters for the economy, business and places. Kate Penney and Jim Pendrill (2022) Strategic Productivity for the Leadership Team, The Productivity Institute. The Productivity Institute, Business Dynamism: is turbulence good for productivity?, Productivity Puzzles Podcast, March 2024. The Productivity Institute, Government policy and business productivity: does it help or harm?, Productivity Puzzles Podcast, April 2024 The Productivity Institute, Should we be worried about business dynamism?, blog. The Productivity Institute, Government policy and business productivity: does it help or harm?, blog.
About Productivity Puzzles:
Productivity Puzzles is brought to you by The Productivity Institute, a research body involving nine academic institutions across the UK, eight Regional Productivity Forums throughout the nation, and a national independent Productivity Commission to advise policy makers at all levels of government. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
More from Productivity Puzzles
Is the UK’s recent productivity recovery a sign of lasting improvement? How could AI, technology adoption and shifting global economic conditions shape the country’s future productivity?
Generative AI has moved from curiosity to everyday tool with remarkable speed. But the big productivity question is not simply whether people are using it; it is whether firms, sectors and economies can turn that use into lasting productivity gains.
Why do firms invest when they do and not necessarily when they should? Are firms too cautious to invest? Or just realistic about uncertainty? Is the real investment gap about money or about mindset?
If one in five working‑age people are inactive, what does that say about the UK’s productivity problem? Why does ill health push so many people out of work in the UK, but not in peer countries?
If universities are engines of growth, why isn’t productivity accelerating? What’s the point of educating graduates if regions can’t keep or use them?